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LONDON - Multiple convicted murderer David Bain's last ditch attempt to clear his name rested on a bloodied pair of socks as his Privy Council hearing began in London today.
Auckland barrister Michael Reed QC, representing Bain, who was convicted of murdering five members of his family in 1995 in Anderson's Bay, near Dunedin, told the five Law Lords that Bain could not have committed the murders because bloody sock-prints found at the murder scene were too small to fit Bain's feet.
Mr Reed spent all of the first day of the week-long hearing making four major points to try and win Bain a retrial.
He said "the bloody footprints" had to belong to Bain's father Robin meaning Robin Bain, rather than David Bain committed the murders.
Former All Black Joe Karam, who has championed David Bain's cause, sat behind Mr Reed throughout today's hearing, passing notes to the barrister.
He later said the hearing had begun well.
"Very obviously the Lords are well-versed in the case with perceptive questions and understanding," he said.
"One of the strong points is the jury was misled on quite a number of issues."
Karram added: "Eleven years ago the case was dead in the water. Only about five people in New Zealand supported it.
"Now 75 per cent think he is innocent. But maybe we need 80 per cent before someone does something."
Mr Reed said Bain senior's mental state had been identified by a visiting educational psychologist at the Taieri Beach School where Bain senior was head as "clinically depressed" and perhaps "psychotic".
The educational psychologist had never even given police a statement, said Mr Reed, which added to his case that the police had acted "incompetently".
Mr Reed added that computer evidence showed a machine was switched on in the Bain house at between 6.39am and 6.42am and not as late as 6.52am on the day of the killings of June 20, 1994, as had been suggested.
He said eye-witness evidence placed Bain at the gate of the family home at 6.45am, meaning he could not have written the message "Sorry, you are the only one that deserved to stay" on the computer as suggested.
Mr Reed also said that fingerprint evidence on the gun used to commit the crime showed blood under David Bain's prints was "mammalian" rather than human, meaning Bain's statement that he had last used the gun to shoot possums several months before the murders was true and should be accepted by a new jury at a retrial.
Bain, then 23, was found guilty in May 1995 of murdering his mother Margaret, his father Robin, sisters Arawa, 19, and Laniet, 18, and brother Stephen, 14.
All had .22 gunshot wounds to their heads.
Bain alerted police to the shooting with a frantic 111 call from the family home.
Police responding to the emergency found him huddled in the house babbling incoherently.
He was arrested four days later.
Bain collapsed in the dock as guilty verdicts were read at the end of a 16-day trial presided over by Justice Neil Williamson at the High Court at Dunedin.
Three weeks later he was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum non-parole period of 16 years.
Justice Williamson has since died, Bain's trial lawyer Michael Guest has been struck off the role of barristers and solicitors for lying to a client and Bain has been incarcerated for well over a decade, but still he fights s to clear his name.
He asserts he is innocent and that his father killed the family before killing himself while Bain was doing his early morning newspaper delivery run.
The attempt to clear his name has been has not been smooth.
The five-day hearing continues on Monday.
- NZPA
